Good, bad, or ugly? How Diwali sales turned out for car and bike makers- The Week

As curtains fall on the festive month of October leading up to a month-end big bang Diwali and the smoke (smog) clears, it is time to adjudge the winners—is the rumoured slowdown a reality? Is the income divide in play? And what of consumer confidence?

The good news, of course, is that sports utility vehicles (SUVs) continue to rule the roost, even acting as a saviour in helping shore up the figures of many auto companies.

The bad news? Not only have deliveries come down (more due to dealers saddled with massive inventory), but the response to non-SUV models appears lukewarm.

And the ugly news—well, the ‘thanda’ approach is not only giving auto executives major worries about meeting annual targets at this rate, but it could also be indicative of a mixed-up economy where the mass consumer base seems anything but confident.

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The two biggest auto companies in the country, Maruti Suzuki and Hyundai India, both posted lifetime high figures. However, even their exultation, as it turns out, is primarily centred around the demand for their SUV models. Maruti Suzuki sold 2.06 lakh cars, its highest ever, up from 1.99 lakh during last October, while Hyundai also hit a lifestyle milestone with 70,000 vehicles.

Of the latter, about 38,000 out of them, or as much as 55%, were SUVs alone. “We witnessed a strong demand for our SUV portfolio during the festive period, leading to our highest-ever monthly SUV sales at 37,902 units, including highest ever monthly domestic sales of the Creta (India’s top-selling SUV) at 17,497 units,” said Hyundai India COO Tarun Garg, “SUVs remain a cornerstone of our line-up, with similar penetration in urban as well as rural markets.”

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Even for an automaker like Mahindra and Mahindra, which has a portfolio of SUVs only, the figures were heartening—it sold upwards of half a lakh SUVs, mainly powered by its Independence Day launch, the Thar variant called ROXX.

While Jindal-controlled MG Motor India has thrown in its lot in the new energy category and claimed great growth, its numbers are still minuscule, at just above 3,000 units.

However, for most others, the figures were no reason for festive cheer—Tata Motors sold 82,682 vehicles, a faint drop from last year’s figure of 82,954, the drop visible across its portfolio from commercial vehicles to passenger cars. Honda, which ruled the days when sedan was king, seemed to be in a dire condition, with domestic sales nearly halving from 9,400 last year to just 5,546 this year.

While the festive sales period last year was spread between October 2023 with Navratri and Dussehra followed by Diwali at the turn of November, what is consternating is that October 2024 had all of the auspicious occasions packed into one month, which, as it turned out, wasn’t power-packed enough. Their hopes now rest on hoping against hope that retail sales preceding Diwali saw a spurt (figures quoted here otherwise are wholesale), and perhaps the ‘festive season’ which extends till New Year, could still see a reversal of (mis)fortune.

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